LETTER: Autograph letter signed to her Uncle William. With portrait.
A Family Letter
Dickinson, Emily. Autograph letter signed, to her Uncle William Dickinson, n.d [November 1880].
A fifty-year-old Dickinson writes to her Uncle William – her father’s brother – of various family members, including her father: “…Please enclose our congratulations when you write my cousin, she will perhaps prize for her Uncle’s sake, who was always so gallant to his young kinsmen – and who thought of your home as of his own, and of you – with so great tenderness….”
Emily Dickinson grew up in a prominent and prosperous household in Amherst, Massachusetts. Along with her younger sister Lavinia and older brother Austin, she experienced a quiet and reserved family life headed by her father Edward Dickinson. In a letter to Austin at law school, Emily once described the atmosphere in her father’s house as “pretty much all sobriety.” Edward attempted to direct her and protect her from reading books that might “joggle” her mind, particularly her religious faith, but her individualistic instincts and irreverent sensibilities created conflicts that did not allow her to fall into step with the conventional piety, domesticity, and social duty prescribed by her father. In fact, Emily’s independent streak evidenced itself in her writing for the rest of her life.
Emily said of her father, “His Heart was pure and terrible and I think no other like it exists.” Edward embodied the ethics of responsibility, fairness, and personal restraint to a point that contemporaries found his demeanor severe and unyielding. He took his role as head of his family seriously, and within his home his decisions and his word were law. He for over forty-five years led a disciplined, civic-minded public life that included several times representing Amherst in the state legislature, serving thirty-seven years as treasurer of Amherst College, and being elected to the Thirty-third Congress from his region. He was a prominent citizen, active in several reform societies, on the board of regional institutions, and involved in major civic improvements, such as leading the effort to bring the railroad to town in the mid 1850s. Ever respectful of her father’s nature (“the straightest engine” that “never played”, Dickinson obeyed him as a child, but found ways to rebel or circumvent him as a young woman, and finally, with wit and occasional exasperation, learned to accommodate with his autocratic ways. Her early resistance slowly shifted to a mutual respect, and finally subsided after his death in pathos, love, and awe. Despite his public involvements, the poet viewed her father as an isolated, solitary figure, “the oldest and the oddest sort of foreigner,” she told a friend, a man who read “lonely & rigorous books”, yet who made sure the birds were fed in winter. When he died, she said, “Lay this Laurel on the one \ Too intrinsic for Renown \ Laurel vail your deathless tree \ Him you chasten - that is he.”
Her father’s brother William, an industrialist in nearby Worcester, was close to the family, and Emily saw him on visits exchanged to each other’s homes. William was the object of her attempt - at age 13 -to get a piano, as she asked for his intercession in finding one. The next year one was delivered to her home. She played it and sang to her father, much to his delight. William’s second wife was Mary, and their daughter - Emily’s cousin - was Helen. Helen married Thomas L. Shields in Worcester on October 26, 1880. Despite her affection for her Uncle, Emily did not leave home to attend the wedding; afterwards he sent her mementos.
Other family members mentioned in this letter are Aunt Libbie (who was Uncle William’s and her father Edward’s youngest sister Elizabeth Dickinson Currier), who kept house for her brother William in Worcester after his first wife died in 1851. Clara was her cousin Clara Newman, whose mother Mary was also a sister of William and Edward. Emily’s father Edward had died in 1874. In 1875, her mother, Emily Norcro
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